Katrina Morse: So I’m speaking with Dan Hogan who is the Executive Director of Club Passim. I’m wondering if you could just introduce yourself and talk a bit about your background and your involvement with the music scene here, both at Passim and in Cambridge in general.
Dan Hogan: I’m Dan Hogan, Executive Director of Passim, which is the overall non-profit that houses Club Passim and the School of Music and our outreach program and a number of other programs that we run. My background, I actually started playing guitar when I was like fifteen years old, in the fifties, just as Joan Baez was coming onto the scene. Some of the first songs I ever learned were her songs and the Kingston Trio. I call myself a closet guitar player, I’m not sure I ever came out of the closet back in the sixties, but played basically for myself. I knew of the Club 47, I actually wasn’t around here so I actually didn’t come until sixty-five when I began law school and then came to the club at that point in its history. I came occasionally, not an awful lot, during that period and then in terms of my own work ended up as a management consultant, I’m a psychologist by training, and did management consulting and lived around here. Then, as a second career, in around 2003 or so, 2002, I started working with a non-profit in Boston and then through just a total series of happenstance, tell me if you don’t want to hear this part of the story--
KM: No, this is great.
DH: --literally on a Sunday afternoon, walking down the street with my daughter, past the old Club 47 which is now Daedalus, and said to her, this was in 2005, and said “Hey, let’s just go in, I want to show you where the old Club 47 was.” And we went in and talked to the bartender, he didn’t know anything about the history, but he said “Somebody came in a couple of weeks ago and brought a flier from the Club 47.” I said “Well could I see it?” and he brought it out from behind some rum bottles, and I look at it, that’s the flier right over there, it showed the outside of the club and a list of who’s playing, you know, twenty-five cents for entrance if you’re a member. So it’s Tom Rush and Mississippi John Hurt and all these incredible people that you could hear for a quarter. Then he put it back and I left, and it bothered me that that flier wasn’t with Passim, because they didn’t seem to care about it. So I went back a couple of weeks later and said, “You know, I really feel that--” and the owner was there, there’s two Irishmen who owned the bar and one of them--the restaurant--one of them was there, Brendan Hopkins, and I talked to him and said “I’d like to give this to Passim” and he said “Sure.” So I took it, called up Passim, got together with them one night in that room over there, our classroom, conference room, lunchroom, and there were a number of board members there, and I met Betsy and some of the board members, and they talked about whether or not I’d be interested in getting on the board. Pure chance, you know. It happened to be that I had just gotten off some boards and it was a good time. It just happened to be a good time. And I said, “Yeah, all right, that sounds like fun.” And so that’s how I ended up getting involved with Passim, and that was in 2005. In 2006 I became Chair of the Board. In 2007, for a few months while Betsy was having an operation I was Interim Executive Director, then in 2008 I was asked to be Executive Director and became Executive Director in July of 2008 and have been ever since. So that’s sort of a strange, accidental route to my involvement. We went through tough times, obviously. 2008 was a really tough period with the economy with everything going south, and it really affected us hugely. We came very close to bankruptcy and having to go out of business, incredibly close. Our bank balance was under twenty dollars at one point and we had a lot of debt and a maxed out credit card, but we did a bunch of things to survive in terms of cutting costs and now we’re reasonably healthy.
KM: That’s an amazing story, you were just in the right place at the right time.
DH: Yeah.
KM: I know you have a pretty diverse background. Had you ever considered a career that involved music?
DH: No, not really. I don’t have a lot of talent, but I liked folk music, the old sixties folk music, and even there, my knowledge is fairly limited. It’s not like I have this huge breadth of knowledge. No, I would not have considered it, and I’m lucky here because we have so many people who really have the kind of background that’s needed, Matt Smith being the principle person in terms of the club and doing all the booking and managing it.
KM: So I’m wondering what you think makes Cambridge unique as a music scene.
DH: Good question. I’ll segue into it by starting out saying that I think the whole Boston arena, but in particular Cambridge, is a great musical scene. There’s wonderful music. Probably the “folk,” in quotes, end of it is more this side of the Charles, but then you have all the classical groups and the Symphony and everything in Boston. And yet, we’re not known, I think, nationwide. We don’t have the reputation of, say, Nashville or Austin has as a music city, which I think is interesting. Actually, I’ve talked to different people about that and what can be done to have people recognize how rich the musical scene is here. Cambridge is amazing, and what makes that so. I think, from my perspective, I think having students around is very important, and having schools like Berklee. Berklee’s in Boston, but a lot of the students at Berklee play over here and come over here. You have a lot of bars that have music, live music, almost every night, whether it’s the Lizard Lounge or The Cantab, Toad, so there’s something going on all the time. We look at Passim as a place to really develop where young singer/songwriters and other musicians can really develop, and they develop sort of an impression, starting out at a bar somewhere, playing, doing a residency once a week or just starting out at open mics and moving along. Cambridge has all the necessary little steps to get you here and beyond and if those steps weren’t there I think it would be a lot tougher. If you didn’t have an active bar scene. We’re primarily a listening room and there aren’t a lot of places like that. There’s not a lot in the country, really. And again, that relates to, if you look at, say, Freight and Salvage and Berklee and Swallow Hill in Denver, Old Town in Chicago, The Ark in Ann Arbor, and then all the major clubs that are known for folk music, they provide a network where folk-type musicians, and I use the word “folk” loosely because it’s really hard to define, and we have so many different forms of music here, that aren’t just quote unquote “folk,” but there’s a network where folk singers and bands can play across the country and it’s important to have all those as a way of supporting the David Wax Museum or Margaret Glaspy, or whomever, you know. They start out here and they get to Passim and then they’re probably gonna be starting to tour, and you need to have places they can tour that are not too far apart so there’s a network that’s all part of keeping the entire scene healthy. Here in Cambridge--I can’t compare it to other cities, I don’t know enough, but I would guess, if you look at the live music that goes on--it’d be interesting to actually get some data on it--there’s probably more live music going on here than almost anywhere. What allows that, I think, is students, I think it’s the history, there’s always been that musical interest. To what extent that’s related to ethnic groups I don’t know, but you know the Celtic scene is very musically oriented. The academic institutions, I think, well certainly Berklee, but we also have all the conservatories around and again they’re more classically oriented, but it’s also, I think, adding to the overall commitment to music that exists.
KM: Cambridge certainly seems to be a very nurturing environment for musicians who are starting out, up and coming musicians, but perhaps not a national destination city for touring musicians. What do you think needs to change for that to be the case?
DH: For Cambridge?
KM: Cambridge and just Boston in general.
DH: Now, when you say that we’re not a national, say more about that.
KM: I guess I’m thinking that Cambridge and Boston don’t seem to be linked to specific bands in people’s minds the way that bands that come out of comparably-sized musical cities are. So there’s certainly a very vibrant music culture here and a lot of talent and a lot of musicians that come out of this area. I don’t know that bands and musical acts are necessarily linked in people’s minds with being Cambridge bands or Boston bands the way that bands that maybe come out of Austin or Portland, Oregon are, and so, even though there’s such a musical culture here, I don’t know that it stands out as a music destination city in people’s minds and a place that breeds musicians for the national stage.
DH: I would argue, again, talk to Matt about it, that we actually do. People like Jimmy Buffett, or Steven Tyler, not a folk singer, Peter Wolf, are all Boston based. Aerosmith. I think there are, and there are a lot of, Suzanne Vega, a lot of people who started out here who move on, and that’s what I was going to say about Passim. Because we’re so small artists outgrow us. Eilen Jewell last night, you know, was pretty much a sold-out concert and packed house. I’m predicting that in a couple of years she’ll be too big for us. Maybe she’ll come back and do two or three nights in a row like Lori McKenna will do, or maybe not. So I don’t know. I feel like we do have a lot of people who have come out of Cambridge but maybe they move on and live somewhere else.
KM: Do you think that people still associate them with--
DH: With Boston?
KM: --with coming from this area, yes.
DH: Well, sometimes no, that’s right, that they end up being associated with wherever they land. I’m probably not the best person to ask about, maybe it’s the case that more people land somewhere else and don’t stay in Boston. They graduate from Boston and they go elsewhere and they get associated with wherever they end up. I don’t have a ready explanation for that. One of the things that I feel is that we don’t have a lot of four hundred seat venues around. I don’t know whether that makes a difference. You have to jump up to something like Sanders at eleven hundred or the Orpheum, larger places. I don’t know if that’s relevant. Say more in terms of what you might be thinking and see if that sparks anything.
KM: Well, I was thinking about what you were saying about there being the stepping stones here for musicians to go from one step up to another and then they get to a certain point and they leave because they outgrow this area, and I’m thinking what needs to be in place for them to stay and not outgrow this area and not move on to like New York or L.A. which I know pulls a lot of musicians away from here. Because there are other cities that are comparably sized where that doesn’t happen. I guess I’m thinking of Austin or Seattle, places like that, which aren’t very big cities, yet the musicians there, I don’t know that they’re pulled away from those cities like they are from Boston.
DH: See, I think there’s still a reasonable number of musicians who still call it home. I think we breed so many that obviously a lot will leave. Chris Smither was always here, it’s just only the last couple of years he moved to the Amherst area, but that was because of his daughter, he wanted a specific school for her, but he’s always been here. So I wonder, is it really the case that everybody leaves, or is it that there’s so many--but maybe the biggest stars, maybe...again, Matt is a much better person to talk to. You know Austin, it seems like a ton of people, major people, you know they’re from Austin. Emmylou Harris. Where is she from originally? I don’t know, but you know that she’s from Austin. Austin is an amazing place. I will tell you in terms of being known, this isn’t to do with where people are, but being known as a music city, one of the theories that I’ve heard is that we don’t have a major festival, and that that’s really important. We don’t have a SXSW, and that’s real important to establish. Another is that we’re incredibly diverse to the point that it almost hurts us. Nashville is the home of country. That’s probably not the only music that exists there, but that’s what it’s known for. Chicago for blues and jazz or something, New York, you know, but Boston has got a lot of everything and maybe that hurts it somehow.
KM: There’s not that focus.
DH: There isn’t that focus. I mean if it were strictly a blues city, say, then the big stars would want to stay here. Maybe it’s that we don’t have that concentration. Maybe that’s part of it.
KM: Yeah. That’s an interesting theory. Working with the folk scene here in Cambridge, do you ever feel that it’s overshadowed by other genres of music in Boston? By maybe the rock scene in Central Square?
DH: Yeah, I think that’s true, and it’s true, I think probably especially with the younger people. My daughters are an example. There’s gonna go to The Middle East or the Middlesex Lounge or downtown and they’re not as interested in the kind of places that I would go to, so I think that’s partly the college age. We have such a high percentage of college students in both Cambridge and Boston, so I think that their interests are not typically as into the folk scene.
KM: Have you seen that change through the years since you were here in the sixties?
DH: Oh yeah, definitely. The sixties was such an abnormal time. Folk songs were number one on the top forty. It had never happened before then and never happened since. That was a really different time due to a whole variety of factors. The folk scene was very much aligned with the protest movement and all the protesting that was going on. The Vietnam War and civil rights was all connected to folk music and that propelled it to a place that it’s never been at since. And again, since I was not really part of the scene in the eighties and nineties I can’t tell you how much it’s shifted, but my sense is that, it’s been a long time, but folk has always been not the predominant scene.
KM: Do you think that it could ever go back to being the predominant scene?
DH: I don’t know.
KM: Or was it just an anomaly.
DH: Yeah. The thing there would maybe be the impact of the internet and the ability of smaller artists to get known more quickly and the ease with which you can make a CD now, and will that promote more diversity and more recognition of indie kind of singers and indie groups. I think it could. How far that will go, I don’t know.
KM: So, I know you have a pretty strong leadership background, and speaking from this perspective, do you think that the music scene in Cambridge, and perhaps specifically the folk music scene, could benefit from more strong leadership? Do you see a dearth of those types of roles?
DH: That’s a good question. I think that...I would say that it’s characterized by not a lot of organization, and I think that without organization it’s harder to have leadership. The folk scene, a little bit by its nature, people are very independent, so you have a loose association of coffee houses around the area, you have all the bars, you have all these places where it takes place but I don’t know of anything that brings those people together to do anything. I’m not going to say it’s anarchy, but it’s certainly not organized. We don’t have a lobby. I’m not sure how you would build it. It could make a difference. There was a number of people more broadly based around the issue of Boston and Cambridge as a music city, a music region, metropolitan area. What could be done around that, so there is a group, loose group, that exists, of which I’m sort of a fringe part, that’s looking at the issue of how do we make Boston and Cambridge, the metropolitan area known as a real music destination. But it wasn’t defined in terms of folk music, it was just a broader issue of music, from a tourism standpoint, to bring people here. But that hasn’t gone very far, let alone in the smaller world of folk music. I think it’s an interesting question: what could be done, how would you do it. Have you, in talking with others, had any ideas around that or thoughts? Because you can’t have leadership because you need something to lead, and there isn’t anything to lead.
KM: I’m thinking, certainly there’s the big folk music festival in Newport that brings everyone in this area together. You were talking earlier about a festival for this area. Certainly if someone wanted to organize something like that it would probably be really beneficial for all the loose organization of folk musicians, at least, in this area. It requires a little more thought. It’s not something I’ve spoken about with everyone, it’s something that I’ve thought specifically in terms of this interview with you because I know that your background is pretty strong in those kinds of things.
DH: Yeah, that’s interesting. A folk festival here could provide the impetus, because then it could be how do you get on the bill and what goes on. You’d want to link with the Boston Bluegrass Union, create something that brought all these different groups together.
KM: That would be really cool. Maybe it could happen the opposite time of year from the Newport festival so they don’t overshadow each other.
DH: Yeah, it would be hard. Of course it would have to be outdoors and Newport’s usually the first week in August.
KM: Maybe some time in the spring. It could happen!
DH: Yeah, June...
KM: Certainly. Or even May. It could be like a Memorial Day weekend thing.
DH: Yeah, yeah.
KM: Something to think about.
DH: Yeah, really. Are you a musician yourself?
KM: Not really. I took a lot of classical piano lessons as a child, but I don’t play today. I’m a music appreciator. I wanted to ask you what you would like to see more of in Cambridge’s music scene, or what you would like to see change.
DH: Well, I guess one thing would be a larger venue. We’d love to have like a four hundred seat venue to bring back larger acts, ones that have outgrown us. Of course at four hundred then they’ll outgrow that, but then you’ve got places that they can play. We can do Passim Presents. I don’t think there are a lot of that size venue. What else would I like to see. I’d like to see more, we’re trying to, we’re looking at the issue of, to what extent can we build the School of Music substantially. The Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago, it’s probably bigger now, but a year or two ago had a ten and a half million dollar budget, three hundred employees, and is launching an eighteen million dollar campaign to build another facility adjacent to their already large facility. That’s staggering, when you think about it. It’s impressive when you go out there. Their music shop does over a million dollars of business and we have all these, we have the Longy School of Music and the conservatories and the different schools that have a music focus, BU or whatever, but we have no real music school. We have a tiny one here, the Cambridge Center has the New School of Music has folk kinds of music, but there is no really significant school. I think there easily could be. We’re looking at, what does it take to do that. That’s something I’d really like to see and I believe it could happen. I think there’s just so much interest in music and it’s so wonderful to have something where--and there are organizations in Boston where you can get it, but there’s nothing really large and there certainly isn’t anything in Cambridge that I know about, and I’d love to see that. And I’d love to see something that is--one of the programs that we’ve started is called Music Speaks, and we’re offering free music education this year, k-8 at the Prospect Hill Academy, which is a charter school in Cambridge and Somerville. Music and the arts, the performing arts especially, are being eliminated from school programs right and left because of all the budget problems and everything, and we think it’s important to try to do something about that so we started that program. It’s tiny. We just met last week with--we started at Prospect Hill, which is the charter school, and we want, this coming year, to integrate it into the after school program at Prospect Hill Academy--I mean, I’m sorry, at the public schools. Sarah Fleischmann, who’s the head of our music school, she and I met with the head of the visual and performing arts for the city public schools and the head of the after school program to talk about doing a program in the public school after school program, so we hope to have that started next year. And we hope to expand it greatly. I believe that we can find donors to help support it. I believe that we can get grant money from foundations to help support it. We’re launching this without knowing that either is going to come through. We just believe that we should do it and we’re willing to take a chance. I figure the only way that, I think that if you just put it on paper and then try to get money it’s going to be tough and we need to simply go out and do it and not say it’s working but see that it’s working and then say “Look, this is working, we need this, the community needs this, the school needs it, the children need it. Can you help us?” So I hope that...
KM: That’s wonderful.
DH: Yeah. I hope it works. I think it will, I mean I believe in it.
KM: Well, I thank you very much for your time. I know you’re very busy. Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about or anything else you think I should know?
DH: No, just one comment. Our new mission is really about community and creating community, through live music, and I think that remains, no matter what happens with the Internet, with CDs, with downloading music, I think live music is just a--and live music that is--I don’t know how--we have a lot of music here, a lot of which is not folk music or however you define it, and going to live music is just a wonderful experience. It’s just amazing. There’s just nothing like it. And I don’t think that will ever change, so what we’re trying to do is bring people together, whether it’s through our school or whether it’s through, we started a summer concert series last year on Palmer Street right out here, free Thursdays lunchtime series. Come in and get chairs and they can sit and have their lunch and listen to music. Music has a way of bringing people together and I don’t think that will ever change and I think it’s important to keep alive.
KM: I agree. Thank you so much, it was really nice speaking with you.
DH: Yeah, thank you. |
